useless-catalanfacts: Royal Decree prohibiting the Catalan language from being used in any kind of o

useless-catalanfacts:Royal Decree prohibiting the Catalan language from being used in any kind of official document (April 2nd, 1700, by the King Louis XIV of France). King Louis had officially declared that “Catalan is disgusting and goes against the honour of the French nation”.How someone can be so offended by people speaking their native language, we still don’t undertand. But they perceived it as a thread to their empire’s power and cultural hegemony, and so it had to be erradicated.ContextTo end the Thirty Years’ War, in 1659 Spain and France signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees, according to which the part of Catalonia that was north of the Pyrenee mountain range was annexed to France, thus being politically separated from the rest of the Catalan Countries. The part of the Catalan Countries under French rule, as it remains nowadays, is known as Northern Catalonia (in Catalan, Catalunya (del) Nord).After this annexation, France tried to eliminate the Catalan language (as it did with all the other local languages of the territories under French rule, known as the Great Linguistic Genocide of France) and replace it with French. One of the earliest attempts was this law, which prohibited using Catalan in official documents. Since then, French remains as the only language that can be used in documents and schools.The Catalan language was considered inferior, so this was followed by centuries of repressions (check out this and this posts if you’re interested). But probably, the most cruel and effective repression was the humiliation of speakers in schools during the 19th and 20th centuries.NowadaysUntil the 20th century, Catalan was the main language used in Northern Catalonia, especially in rural areas. Nowdays, about half of the population understands Catalan, and between 20% and 30% of people can speak it, but less than 10% knows how to read and write it or use it in everyday life. There are many effords by associations to use it in schools and other contexts, but the French government and the Academie Française always block them. -- source link

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